Despite four high-profile executions in Arkansas in April, the death penalty is on the decline in the United States — and that is thanks in large measure to a major shift in public opinion that has been driven in part by Catholics.

Beale also interviewed CCATDP’s Heather Beaudoin who discussed the increased conservative involvement in repealing the death penalty and the myriad of reasons why conservatives are opposing the death penalty.

Beale reported,

Changed Minds

Whether a prudential judgment or a doctrinal statement, it appears that John Paul II’s opposition to the death penalty has influenced many Catholics to change their stance.

Heather Beaudoin, the co-coordinator of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, said that many of those involved in the movement hail from a Catholic background. She noted that one of the founders of the group is longtime conservative fundraiser and publisher Richard Viguerie, who is Catholic. A number of Republican lawmakers who have led the charge to end capital punishment also are Catholic, according to Beaudoin.

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, which was founded on a national level in 2013, represents a growing discomfort over state executions among the political right.

Beaudoin once worked at a crisis-pregnancy center in her home state of Montana and said being against the death penalty is part of being pro-life. Some may contend that there’s a difference, because those sentenced to death are not innocent. But Beaudoin says the risk of executing someone who later turns out to be innocent is too high: Since the 1970s, more than 150 death-row inmates have been exonerated, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The death penalty should also give fiscally minded conservatives pause, too, Beaudoin says, given its exorbitant cost.

In Kansas, for example, death-penalty cases cost on average $400,000, four times as much as those where it is not a factor, according to a 2014 state report. California has spent more than $4 billion on death penalty-related expenses, according to a report cited by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Some counties have been nearly bankrupted by such high costs, Beaudoin said. (One county in Nebraska, for example, had to mortgage its ambulances after attempting to execute two offenders, according to Beaudoin.)

There’s also an important philosophical argument to consider for those who want limited government. “There is no greater power that we can give to the state than the ability to decide who lives and who dies,” Beaudoin said.